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Body scanners – an expensive waste of time?

Werner Gruber, an Austrian physics professor from the Institute for Experimental Physics in Vienna, has mounted a demonstration that strongly suggests that body scanners are completely worthless.

Werner Demo The good professor smuggled a metal knife, a detonator, and several bottles of explosive powder through the machine and as an added bonus he also managed to smuggle a large quantity of crystal explosives hidden under a plaster stuck to his body.

The government would have us believe that the total body scanner is the new wonder weapon in the fight against terrorism, but in the programme broadcast on the German television channel ZDF the professor smuggled his mini terrorist arsenal through without any problem – the only things picked up by the scanner were his studio microphone and a mobile telephone..!

The manufacturers amusingly claimed that the test was not valid as "things would be different at the airport."

The professor had admitted in advance that he was smuggling a knife and other material to give the testers – who watched the pictures produced by the scanner and tried to spot the smuggled items – a chance to find the kit, but they still failed.

I think this demonstrates the total pointlessness of the full-body scanners that are set to invade our privacy and humiliate passengers at our airports.

While children and families are being subjected to smirking staff with body scanning surveillance, everything these expensive machines should catch goes sailing through.

By Alex Deane

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Alex Deane Posted in Body Scanners
  • zorro

    Follow the money….Eisenhower warned of the military/industrial complex exerting too much influence. In the UK and elsewhere it is now the security/industrial complex flaunting its wares at various trade shows and security jamborees.
    Again, very little real impact on crime or aviation security as the figures show, but lots of money for certain people and undue influence and cosy dinners with various LEA CEOs.
    In any case with our rather comatose Nigerian friend on Christmas Day…. What passport did he use to get through Schiphol’s notoriously rigid security passport checks before boarding?…..Or did he get a little fast track attention to make sure that he got on the plane….hahaha….it’s not as if he fitted any possible inadmissible/terrorist passenger profile…. I mean after all, passport (well nothing official on that yet) no baggage, cash paid ticket, known to MI5, CIA, and FBI, had been refused a UK visa. The father had warned about him only recently….information somehow got misfiled…right…I mean he sounds like the perfect business traveller to fast track through the control. Yes he gave a new meaning to the VIZ character Johny Fartpants!

  • http://profile.typepad.com/neonbubble1 Mark

    Well worth a listen is podcast #235 from http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ which includes a short chat with security expert Bruce Schneier (his site here: http://www.schneier.com/) in which he talks about airport scanners (waste of money) and profiling (waste of time); in his opinion – and he makes a good case – many of the compromises we all make in the name of security are nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to make the population feel safer while not actually helping at all. Naturally, the side-effects of high expense and privacy-invasion are just bonuses. To somebody.